It’s the start of the year and millions of high school students are rushing to fill out all of their college applications, and get them in on time. It’s hard enough with school work, sports, and of course the pressure of deadlines. Yet, recently, Common App has been experiencing technical difficulties, preventing students from completing their applications.

Every year millions of students across the country use the Common App to apply to hundreds of colleges quickly and efficiently. However, this year things were a little bit different. The Common App launched a new website to accommodate the cultivating number of college applicants. Though, there have been numerous bugs with the website that have prevented these applicants from finishing and submitting the application. As a result, multiple colleges have extended their November first deadlines to accommodate these various software problems. The University of Chicago, Emory, Duke, Dartmouth, Yale, Columbia, Villanova, and George Washington are some of the schools that have all extended their deadlines. These technical complications are frustrating and aggravating, according to most students who find themselves banging their heads against walls, waiting for the website to allow them to finish their application. I personally experienced these technical difficulties this year when trying to submit three of my college applications. For me, the problem was that whenever I finished the testing section of my application, the website failed to recognize its completion with a green check. With everything completed and ready to go except for this one section, I became extremely stressed while trying to make my first deadline (which hadn’t been moved). Numerous other Bullis students also experienced these technical difficulties, such as Simone Goldstone. “There was no submit button for my writing supplement,” Goldstone said. “Everything was ready to go and I was excited to send in my application, but it wouldn’t let me. It was so annoying to have to wait.” Jessica Howard also experienced problems: “The Common App wouldn’t save any of my information and every time I logged in, I had to re-enter all of my information,” Howard said. “What was worse was that the Common App then locked me out of the website and prevented me from doing anything for an entire weekend, it was a complete mess.” Nick Sussman faced additional complications as well: “Continuous errors occurred everytime I tried to submit a section for completion,” Sussman said. “For an entire week it wouldn’t let me submit the last part of my application. Then, overnight, the problem fixed itself and I was ready to submit it.” As time goes on, the Common App plans to work out all of its current problems to provide future applicants easier use of their services. However, for the time being the Common App leaves students frustrated and angry as they try to apply to college.